Israel budgets $3 bn for strike on Iran - report

Israel’s 2014 military budget includes at least 10 billion shekels devoted to preparations for war with Iran, Haaretz newspaper reports. Top Jerusalem officials recently said that Israel may strike Tehran’s nuclear sites even without US help.

The Tel Aviv daily cited three parliamentarians who had been
present at joint committee meetings at the Knesset earlier this
year, where figures of 10 to 12 billion shekels (US$2.89 billion
to $3.47 billion) were touted by senior Israel Defense Forces
officials. The sum is being spent on preparing for an air strike
on Iran’s nuclear facilities, even if it does not take place. It
constitutes about one-fifth of the total military budget – about
the same amount that was spent last year.

The parliamentarians said they questioned the decision to
maintain funding in view of Tehran’s softening relations with the
West, only to be told by army commanders that Israel’s political
leaders ordered them to continue regardless.

While the world’s leading powers have eased sanctions on Iran in
exchange for its curtailing of its nuclear enrichment program –
and have been negotiating in Vienna this week – Israel has
remained steadfast in its belief that Tehran is attempting to
develop its own nuclear weapons, and is using the talks to buy
themselves time and economic relief.

On Monday, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon criticized the
US for wishful thinking during its attempts to find a diplomatic
solution.

"Weakness certainly does not pay in the world," Yaalon
told students at Tel Aviv University.

"No one can replace the US as the world's policeman. I hope
the US will come to its senses."

"If we wished others would do the work for us, it wouldn't be
done soon, and therefore in this matter, we have to behave as if
we can only rely on ourselves," said Yaalon.

Netanyahu has also persisted with the line he held during Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad’s abrasive presidency, despite the tentative ‘charm
offensive’ that Iran has undertaken since the relatively moderate
Hassan Rouhani replaced Ahmadinejad less than a year ago.

“Letting the worst terrorist regime on the planet get atomic
bombs would endanger everyone, and it certainly would endanger
Israel since Iran openly calls for our destruction,”
Netanyahu said in a speech this month.

Tehran insists that it has no plans to manufacture nuclear arms,
and even Israel’s own intelligence agency now believes that there
has been a “strategic change” in Iran's nuclear stance
since last year, according to an earlier Haaretz report.

Nonetheless, the latest talks in Vienna – where Iran has faced
the US, China, Russia, Great Britain, France, and Germany – have
not produced a concrete outcome.

Adding to the long-established issues of access to existing
facilities and the extent of Iran’s enrichment and stockpiling of
plutonium – a key ingredient in nuclear devices – is a
yet-to-be-finished nuclear reactor at Arak.

Western negotiators say the facility in its current form could be
used for plutonium enrichment and should be modified, while
Tehran insists its uses will be chiefly medical.

The two sides have set themselves a July 20 deadline, by which a
definitive agreement has to be produced on the country’s nuclear
program. But for Israel’s leaders, each month without concrete
action is one month closer to Tehran possessing its own nuclear
weapons – meaning that vast expenditures to ready for a strike
are as necessary as ever.